Atlantis : the antediluvian world by Ignatius Donnelly
page 100 of 487 (20%)
page 100 of 487 (20%)
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Dwyfam and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel without rigging,
and it was by them that the island of Prydian was repeopled." Pictet here observes: "Although the triads in their actual form hardly date farther than the thirteenth or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly connected with very ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a borrowing from Genesis. "But it is not so, perhaps, with another triad, speaking of the vessel Nefyddnaf-Neifion, which at the time of the overflow of Llyon-llion, bore a pair of all living creatures, and rather too much resembles the ark of Noah. The very name of the patriarch may have suggested this triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning, but evidently formed on the principle of Cymric alliteration. In the same triad we have the enigmatic story of the horned oxen (ychain banog) of Hu the mighty, who drew out of Llyon-llion the avanc (beaver or crocodile?), in order that the lake should not overflow. The meaning of these enigmas could only be hoped from deciphering the chaos of barbaric monuments of the Welsh middle age; but meanwhile we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed an indigenous tradition of the Deluge." We also find a vestige of the same tradition in the Scandinavian Ealda. Here the story is combined with a cosmogonic myth. The three sons of Borr--Othin, Wili, and We--grandsons of Buri, the first man, slay Ymir, the father of the Hrimthursar, or ice giants, and his body serves them for the construction of the world. Blood flows from his wounds in such abundance that all the race of giants is drowned in it except Bergelmir, who saves himself, with his wife, in a boat, and reproduces the race. |
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